Friday, July 7, 2017

More than Half of Russians Reject Putin’s Tactic of Talking about Local Issues Rather than National Ones

Paul
Goble

Staunton, July 7 -- In order to
avoid discussion of systemic issues, Vladimir Putin via his Direct Line program
and otherwise has made a fetish out of being the good tsar who can reach down
to solve the most petty and local problems. But a new poll shows that more than
half of Russians don’t think he should be addressing such issues.

Instead, a majority says he should
be focusing on bigger issues, something he has been loath to do because those
would involve either a change in direction of his policies or discussions that
would almost inevitably deepen rather than paper over existing divisions among
Russians about past, present and future.

But this is a narrow majority: 44
percent of the sample said that the president should solve local problems. Of
these, 12 percent said local officials aren’t solving them, eight percent say
that the president has to intervene to solve them, seven percent that this is
the responsibility of the president, and six that “the president should control
the work of bureaucrats” in this way.

Dspite this, there
seems little likelihood that Putin will change his approach: Not only is he
going to four regions where gubernatorial elections will occur in the next two
weeks (newsru.com/russia/06jul2017/runelect.html),
but he has included how governors deal with citizen appeals part of the Kremlin’s
rating system for them (kp.ru/daily/26701/3725947/).